


a case of terminal wanderlust

by paox



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Paranormal, Supernatural Elements, its happy ending its just Sad Middle, just some bois travelling the world, lmao oh well, this is some sad shit huh i hurt them a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paox/pseuds/paox
Summary: “Let’s run away together,” Ace says. “Get out of this city, find someplace or keep moving, I don’t know.”They’re curled up on some stranger’s spare bed, pressed together so they’ll know if the other gets taken in the middle of the night, and Sabo says, “Okay,” and, “You know I’d follow you anywhere.”.or: ace has an unhealthy inability to settle down, sabo is a runaway, and nothing is the same anymore when ace is just suddenly gone and the house is cold all the time and luffy swears he can see the ghost of the dead love of sabo's life everywhere.





	1. soulmate

**Author's Note:**

> hey! enjoy! next few chapters might take a while but they'll be up soon

**soulmate;** **  
** **_/səʊlmeɪt/_ ** **\- noun** **  
** **  
** **meaning: a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner; somebody you care about more than anything in the world; that boy with the grey eyes you would die for without a second of hesitation;** **  
** **  
** **example:** _ ‘And Sabo pulls away, winds his fingers through Ace’s hair and grins, and says, “Of course I am.”’ _

**.**

**.**

**.**

**2009.**

When Sabo first meets Ace, he’s sixteen and Ace is sixteen too and they’re both logged on to some shitty forum made for people with too much time on their hands and too much curiosity than is healthy to make shitty posts about cryptids and conspiracies and the paranormal. Sabo’s life is a constant, dull conundrum of hiding; hiding his notebooks and his phone from his bitter parents, hiding from the rougher kids at school, hiding from the possibility that someday he’s going to have to wake up, hiding from everything. It’s dull and life has lost the brightness it had when he was a kid, when things were better, and everybody says you miss school when it’s over but Sabo wants nothing more than to get out of here - to leave this town and never look back. 

They talk for hours that first night - first a debate about that article on  _ Shunka Warakin, _ then meaningless conversation about nothing in particular, then something more, something like friendship, cluttered with awkward, fumbling internet abbreviations and an unsure kind of hopefulness that comes with making a friend. Sabo stays up until three am, when Ace asks him  _ what time is it with u? _ and Sabo is too tired to lie about it, and Ace tells him to sleep and he agrees. 

The next morning, he wakes up with two messages from Ace - one asking  _ where do you even live like what kind of timezone is that, _ and the other, sent a few hours later, a simple, sweet  _ i want to talk to you more sometime lol, _ and it warms Sabo’s heart in a way nothing has for a long time. 

It’s almost like a new source of light at dusk, like Ace is a torch in the darkness with the power to reverse the astral course of the sun. Life is a little bit lighter, a little bit simpler. Sabo has to steal eye drops from the store down the road and hides them in a little tear in his mattress, uses them when his eyes get too dry from night after night of staring at the computer screen in the dark, of hushed skype calls that last for hours and hours and hours. Ace lives in America, in a city that he hates, with people that he hates more, and he says that someday he wants to run away to England to be with Sabo and Sabo laughs and buries his face in his pillow to hide the flush spreading across his cheeks. 

Sabo survives his GCSEs, conquers them after night after night of restlessness and studying and stress, because Ace is here now and he messages after every last shitty exam, asks  _ how was it? _ even though it means he has to get up ridiculously early. He does it anyway, and the computer screen feels like a barrier, like something blocking Sabo from his future because goddamnitt, he knows what his future is going to be from the second Ace sees his blotchy red eyes after a bad night with his parents and says  _ fuck, fucking shit, Sabo, someday I’m going to get you out of there _ and Sabo believes him. 

Neither of them knows what they’re doing, with Ace being battered both by exams and finals and by the gang members that frequent his area, and by the money stretching thinner with each passing day, and with Ace looking close to tears and so much younger than usual when he tells Sabo,  _ we might have to sell my laptop, _ and neither of them knows quite what to say. There’s something in Ace that strives for something great, Sabo can see it - something that wants to take everything people might assume because of his upbringing and shove it in their faces - but he’s trapped; beneath the poverty, and the helplessness, and the way the world is when it comes to kids like Ace. 

Sabo is seventeen when Ace says it, both of them heavy-eyed (Sabo with exhaustion, Ace with something else). “Run away, Sabo.”

And Sabo is close to dropping off, the clock ticking over 4:34am, and his voice doesn’t sound like his when he whispers, “Soon. I’ll be there soon.”

Soon is a year away, a year and a million miles and the whole Atlantic ocean away, and Ace must see something that says that in Sabo’s eyes because he just nods, tells Sabo to go to sleep, and that they’ll talk in the morning, and that he loves him and Sabo says it back and passes out on his keyboard, face smushed against the keys, wishing like hell he could just cross the ocean and find a way to be there with Ace instead. 

The world spins on and it’s still bright because Ace is in it, Ace is with him, Ace is a part of him and that’s really all that matters at this point. Sabo knows what life is, knows how it can suck or it can be amazing and he’s given up on trying to convince himself that he’s meant to be stuck anywhere but at this boy’s side. He flunks his A Levels because he spends too much time talking to Ace, or catching up on sleep after twelve-hour skype calls, and he doesn’t care because his future is America, where Ace is, and that’s enough. 

It’s late and a school night, and Sabo is pulling his overgrown hair out of its tie when Ace calls him: Sabo answers and Ace’s face fills up the screen, bright and grinning, and he says, breathless, “I did it.”

Sabo doesn’t need to ask what - because Ace has been talking about it for a long time, about grabbing his shit and ditching and leaving the city, and travelling east or west or wherever the hell wasn’t there, and he’s got a swollen up black eye and a big grin and freedom sparking in the grain of his grey eyes. 

Sabo’s eighteenth is a few days away so he just nods breathlessly and grins at Ace, feels something heady and desperate growing inside of him.

“I’ll be there soon,” he replies, and that’s that. 

A few nights later, it’s ridiculously late and Sabo swipes his father’s credit card, transfers himself enough money for a one way ticket to Denver and a little extra, and then grabs his stuff and calls a taxi and doesn’t even bother to leave a note. The taxi driver barely spares him a glance as he climbs in and as the little digital clock on his phone ticks over to 00:00, Ace messages  _ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU DUMB SHIT  _ and Sabo is suddenly choking back sobs in the back of the taxi, curling in on himself, breathless and struggling to breathe because this is it - he’s ditching his life and his home and risking everything, literally everything, for Ace, and he doesn’t even have the fucking sense to be scared. 

He messages Ace back, a rushed jumble that doesn’t make sense, and Ace replies  _ did he catch u?  _ and Sabo says  _ no, god no, i just can’t wait to see you  _ and Ace says  _ we’ll find a place ye? _

And a part of Sabo believes that yeah, they will. 

**.**

It’s not even Ace’s fault; he’s a little late, and Sabo’s plane is a little early, and that’s all it is. Sabo loiters in the arrivals hall, hands shoved into his pockets with his backpack strapped over both shoulders, and the sun tracks on its upward course through the sky. Just as sunlight is peaking through the high airport windows, golden-orange with sunrise as it catches the dust hanging in the air in shafts, Ace stumbles through the revolving door - Ace, scruffy and scrappy and young but with that same dark hair and grey eyes, scrambling and stumbling as he sprints across the hall to Sabo and Sabo runs forwards too. 

Sabo isn’t sure which of them jumps into the other’s arms, which of them wrapped their arms around the other first, but they collide and stay that way, spinning off at a tangent with the impact, and Ace is here and warm and  _ real,  _ Sabo’s face in his shoulder, saying, “Holy shit, Sabo, holy shit, you’re here, you’re really fucking here-”

And Sabo pulls away, winds his fingers through Ace’s hair and grins, and says, “Of course I am.”

**.**

They live rough for a while .

It’s not homelessness, but it’s not really like they have a home either. Ace has friends, people who owe him shit or used to know his parents or just people who buy it when he lies and says he’s somebody he’s not. They offer rooms - couches he and Ace can crash on, tangled together like one body - or money to hole up in motels for a while, or to put in a good word with the hostels to let Ace and Sabo stay there for a while. Some nights they won’t find a place, or it’ll go wrong and they’ll end up running for their lives, clutching hands and sprinting and sprinting until Sabo’s lungs are burning and Ace’s legs are shaking and they collapse in some alley together, terrified and shaking and Ace cursing, a stream of swears, clutching Sabo like it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Sabo wouldn’t change it for the world. 

They have a little money, from Sabo’s father and from a few odd jobs they work here and there and from stealing as much as their deep pockets can hold whenever they can, and it builds - slowly, sure, but it builds, pooling in the bottom of Sabo’s bag, the coins wrapped in tissue or paper so they don’t jingle - and it’s Sabo’s nineteenth birthday when Ace says it. 

“Let’s run away together,” Ace says. “Get out of this city, find someplace or keep moving, I don’t know.”

They’re curled up on some stranger’s spare bed, pressed together so they’ll know if the other gets taken in the middle of the night, and Sabo says, “Okay,” and, “You know I’d follow you anywhere.”

**.**

**.**

**.**

**2013.**

Sabo is twenty when they get the car, stolen from some drunk fuck who is barely conscious enough to notice when Ace swipes his keys and Sabo pats down his pockets for loose change. They would feel bad about it, but they don’t, and Ace grins as he swings into the driver’s seat and starts up the engine, and they pile their shit into the backseat. It smells like cat piss and smoke and it’s old as hell, but the seats recline and the engine works and there’s a spot between them, below the gearstick, where they can intwine their fingers and it already feels like home.  

They’re still in Colorado, still sticking to country lanes and shitty motels and roadside diners where the food is more grease than actual food. Ace is taller, leaner, something new in his eyes that Sabo only noticed when the light caught his face in a particular way on New Year’s Eve, and there’s a scar that goes right through his eyebrow from where a guy pulled a knife on him in a 7/11 once a few months ago. Sabo has earned his stripes too, through countless fist fights and scuffles when somebody catches his nimble fingers - because he’s not perfect, no matter how much he wishes he could be for Ace if not for himself - and he knows how to throw a punch now, and how to block one too, and keeps a knife stashed up his sleeve even when he’s sleeping, just in case. 

Life isn’t easy, but with Ace? Nothing could be any better.

**.**

They stop Boulder for a while, for long enough to refuel in more ways than one - because Ace spends so much time driving that his ankles are cramping, the joints in his fingers cracking whenever he outstretches them from their position around the wheel. Sabo needs it too, needs the security of having a place to sleep that isn’t the reclined passenger seat, needs a shower and a warm bed and for Ace to not be so tired all of the time. 

Boulder is quieter than Denver, feels smaller and sparser, like somebody took Denver and stretched it thin. Ace’s twenty-first birthday hits after a few weeks of being here and it’s so fucking cold that both of them are shivering as they watch the fireworks, huddled together on the hill a few minutes from the motel they’re staying at, but Ace is grinning and he looks more alive than he has in months, and that makes everything okay again. 

They meet the little group after they’ve been in Boulder for a while - a few nameless guys Ace knew online once, who moved in similar circles and run around the state filming shitty home videos as they break into the best ‘haunted’ locations they can find. Sabo thinks it’s all bullshit, pure utter bullshit, but they both roll with these guys for a few weeks because there’s this kid with them - Luffy - who is young, barely thirteen, small and skinny with the traces of a foreign accent in his voice and this constant pleading in his eyes, like he’s praying for somebody -  _ anybody  _ \- to notice that he’s here at all. 

Ace and Sabo stay for him, really. The pay isn’t great for helping these guys out with their shit (mostly filming and editing footage with shitty programs because it’s  _ twenty-fucking-fourteen  _ and everybody is still living in the Mesozoic Period when it comes to computers). They’re both working two jobs on the side, still living out of a cheap motel to forgo the finality that would come with renting an apartment. Any extra money they get they give to Luffy, and he doesn’t complain because he’s just a kid and he doesn’t have the introspective kind of nobility for that kind of crap, just takes the money and uses it to buy shit the three of them can share. 

They’ve been working for these guys for barely a month by the time this kid is attached to them and refuses to let go, not that either of them wants him to. He’s Brazilian, they find out, smuggled over when he was just a kid without documents or even a legal name or anything at all. Neither of them (nor Luffy, really) even knows how to spell his name, but they spend a night guessing and it’s funny to watch Luffy trying to spell the name out in his head, young face screwing up with the concentration. The version they decide on in the end is most definitely wrong, but honestly? Not one of them gives a fuck. 

It’s sad, though - sad to watch as Luffy forces his jittery hands to stay still as he holds the camera to film the other guys, as he presses down on his jumping knee to stop it moving when somebody hisses at him to quit it. There’s so much pent up energy inside him, building and building like it should be able to expand outside of himself and stretch out of this city, out of this state - like he should be free but he’s trapped in the body of a thirteen-year old illegal immigrant, not somebody who can achieve the kind of freedom that comes on the packet when America advertises itself. 

(Then again, Sabo supposes, he’s illegal too, and probably a felon ten times over now - and Ace probably ten times more than that. Maybe all three of them were meant to gravitate together, if you look at it like that.) 

“Let’s leave,” Ace says, voice tired but full.

Sabo tucks his hands further under the covers to grab at Ace’s, to pull him back into whatever sleep this sudden thought must have pulled him out of, to say  _ no, not now, leave it until the morning,  _ but without words. Ace ignores it. 

“We’ve been here too long,” he says - and then, as though it even constitutes for an excuse, his voice is small as he says, “The car’ll get dusty.”

“Ace…” Sabo says, then, “You know I would follow you to hell, but-”

“But what?” 

But the truth is yeah, Sabo trusts Ace - trusts his instincts, which are very rarely wrong, and his street smarts, and everything else that makes him Ace. And sure, it’s not healthy, but neither is the living rough and the crime and the fact that Sabo doesn’t even have his goddamn passport anymore, so nothing is really healthy anymore. And life got better the last time they just up and left a place, so why not now?

But-

“Luffy,” Sabo chokes out, “What about Luffy, Ace?”

“We’ll take him with us,” Ace says, in that voice that almost makes it seem like he’s thought this through. “Take him on the road and keep him safe, yeah? That’s all we can do, Sabo, someday the police’ll find him here or somebody will pick up on the fact that he’s illegal or he’ll get left behind by the other guys.”

“Isn’t that… kidnapping?” Sabo says, and it sounds stupid because they’re fucking  _ criminals  _ but it hurts Sabo’s heart to associate the words  _ Luffy  _ and  _ kidnapping _ in any way.

“I think kidnapping is better than what he’s got now, Sab.”

And it’s true - goddamnit, it’s really true, because the other guys are scattered in rooms down the hall and Luffy is sleeping in Ace and Sabo’s car in the parking lot outside because the guys didn’t think to get another room for him and Ace and Sabo don’t have the money for it and Luffy refused to sleep in their room because he insisted he would be fine outside (and Sabo knows that it’s really just to stop the other guys from realising that they forgot him, because they would make a big joke out of it). 

“Look,” Ace says, voice heavy. “We give it a week. Take our last paychecks - maybe hold up a store, I don’t know, something to get some cash - and then we get that kid in the backseat of the car and get the fuck out of dodge. We’ll leave Boulder - hell, we can leave fucking Colorado if you want, Sabo - and we’ll find some new place and we’ll be together and we’ll keep him safe, alright? We can do that, at least.”

And Sabo looks into Ace’s eyes and can’t make himself say no.

**.**

Luffy is asleep in the backseat, head resting against the window with his mouth a little open, snoring and curled up into himself. Sabo drums his fingers on the dashboard in the front and tries not to listen to Ace, standing a few metres from the car outside, arguing with the owner of the motel they’ve been staying at for a long time now and are now ditching. There’s a song playing on the radio that Sabo vaguely recognises, something sad about loss and leaving, and he turns it down. 

By the time Ace gets into the driver’s seat, the owner of the motel is reaching for his phone and Sabo doesn’t even have to ask to know what number he’s calling. The nearest police station is on the other side of the district and Ace just  _ floors it, _ out of the parking lot and down the road with the outraged motel owner fading into the distance behind them as the car kicks up a cloud of dust. Ace accelerates down the empty road out of Boulder until they hit ninety, and on one sharp turn Luffy’s head bounces against the window but he doesn’t wake up, and Sabo busies himself with keeping an eye on the road behind them and straining his ears to catch the first traces of sirens. 

There’s nothing. Maybe it’s too late in the day and the police are off their game, or maybe they don’t think it’s worth a full car chase for a few hundred dollars in missing payments to the motel - either way, Sabo doesn’t care, just sits back in the car seat and crosses his arms and he and Ace don’t hold hands.

**.**

They drive more than they used to, rarely stopping anymore, and never for more than a few days no matter how tired they all are. The three of them drive up through Fort Collins and out of the state (and Sabo and Luffy hide under the seats a few miles from the border so they’re out of sight when Ace is asked to hand over documentation, because he’s the only one with any). The motels stay shitty and the days aren’t any easier, but there are moments scattered here and there that feel magical, and whole, and like the three of them are brushing on something unimaginable. 

Like the one time Sabo and Luffy are wandering around a corner shop, Sabo sipping on a slurpee as he browses through the aisles and pretends he has the money for anything on the shelves, and Luffy runs up to him with a ridiculously large pair of sunglasses perched on his nose and a shit-eating grin. Sabo just  _ knows,  _ then and there, that they’re going to have to steal them for him so he just pockets a fistful of chocolate bars, grabs Luffy’s hand and tugs him out of the store, sunglasses still on, the attendant yelling after them. They sprint down the street in peals of laughter, both too pumped on adrenaline to even remember where Ace and the car are for a moment. 

Or the other time when Sabo gets in a fight (again) with some guy ten times bigger than him (again) with a brutish temper who threatens to stick a knife in him (again). So he squares up, draws his knife and throws the first punch like he’s taught himself how to, is scrappy and strong and doesn’t back down even as the guy’s lackies pin him to the ground, steals himself and forces himself to keep the grin on his face even around the blood that fills his mouth as the guy stamps on his face. And then Ace and Luffy are suddenly there - Ace shoots the big guy’s kneecaps out with the gun he and Sabo stole from Denver a million years ago, and Luffy spider-monkeys the one stomping on Sabo’s face and elbows him hard in the eye socket, and Sabo drags himself to his feet and fights until it’s only them three standing and then he lets Ace carry him home. 

It’s no longer  _ Ace and Sabo,  _ it’s _ Ace and Sabo and Luffy,  _ and Sabo wouldn’t change it for the world. They’re a unit, a team without a team name or any concrete agreement but it’s the three of them, forever and for the foreseeable future. Luffy hits his fourteenth birthday and they celebrate with a cake Ace saves up for, and ten candles because they only had one pack in the store, and Luffy - with the sleeves of his hoodie too long and sliding down over his wrists, and his hair messy and overgrown, and wearing a pair of Sabo’s sweatpants long enough that he has to roll them up five times - has never looked happier than then. 

Their family - a British knife-fighter runaway and some inner-city criminal from Denver and a kid from Brazil without a name - is unconventional, but at the same time it comes close to something perfect, Sabo thinks. 

**.**

**.**

**.**

**2016**

Maine is cold and cozy, and they stop in at small seaside town and find some shitty roadside place and stay there for a while. The little town is filled with old people with too many stories to tell than they have time to, and the air smells like the ocean and the sky is grey or white most of the time, never really blue, but there’s something almost concealed about the place - almost like it exists in a pocket of time that the real world hasn’t been able to touch yet. 

The room they get has two beds - a single and a double - and Sabo and Ace still sleep pressed together from having to do it so long just out of necessity back in Denver. There’s still an instinctual part of Sabo that is scared of waking up and Ace being gone, scared of somebody coming for them in the middle of the night, scared of his  _ father  _ even, but after spending so much time around Ace - who always has something almost afraid about him but never lets it show, never lets the panic rise higher than he wants to allow it to - you learn to bury it. The only time either of them really lets themselves be afraid is when it’s nighttime, and Luffy is snoring contentedly in the corner, and the nightmares come and neither of them makes any noise, just holds the one who is shaking or crying or trying not to scream and stays that way until the morning comes. 

The stolen car has lasted them this long, at least, and Luffy doesn’t look sad all the time, and Ace still sings along out-of-key and loudly whenever a song comes on the radio even if it’s a song he doesn't really know. Sabo’s shoulders feel looser than they ever have, his smile wider, something tender about himself now that he’s never really had before. So life is good, and it’s the best they could have ever hoped for - and Sabo has Luffy and Ace, and that’s enough.

One day, the three of them trek out over the rocks, hanging precariously over the grey, grey sea, and it’s as perilous as it is peaceful up here. Ace grabs Sabo’s hand and clings to it to keep from stumbling, and Luffy (who is more agile and nimble than either of them) darts along ahead of them, gravel skittering over into the ocean as he displaces bits of rock without seeming to care much about whether he falls. Somewhere, a seagull is cawing, and it echoes in the void of silence. It’s so still here, cold and exhilarating, and Sabo stops for a while to just stand there, perched on the ledge with Ace’s fingers entwined with his own, staring out over the ocean. Wondering, for some reason, what would happen if he jumped. 

Ace would be sad. Of course he would - even Sabo isn’t self-loathing enough to delude himself into thinking he wouldn’t be. They’re pretty much only alive because of one another, anyway; Sabo has saved Ace’s life more times than he can count, and Ace probably knows at this point that if they had never started talking at all, Sabo wouldn’t have had any reason to keep on going. Luffy would be sad, too, but he’s so young and so resilient that he would be able to move forwards with a smile on his face. Nobody else would care, Sabo realises with a start. Nobody else would even know. 

Ace squeezes his hand. “Sabo, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m-” Sabo squeezes back, tight. “I’m alright.”

They carry on, right up until they reach the end of the trail. And Sabo wishes life could always be like this. 

.

Ace wakes Sabo up in the middle of the night and Sabo is too tired to even protest as his best friend pulls a sweatshirt over his head and ruffles his bedhead horribly, and then just grabs his hand and pulls him out of the door, both of them in sweatpants and haphazardly thrown-on flip flops. Luffy is still asleep in the corner. Sabo tries to reach up and wipe the sleep from his eyes, and it doesn’t do much good so he just sighs and lets himself be dragged along by Ace, who seems determined at this point to just tug him all the way to wherever they’re going without much concern for anything else. 

The streets outside are dark and the moon is full, hanging over the ocean and making everything just a little silver. Nothing is moving - all the lights are out and there is nobody on the streets, all the boats clustered in the bay bobbing a little, vacant and with dark windows. Ace pulls Sabo across the street, stumbling as his flip flip catches on the flagstone, and through a gap in the houses on the front and then to the railing overlooking the seafront. He shimmies up to sit on it, legs overhanging the rocks below, and Sabo copies the movement sleepily. When they’re both sitting up there, overlooking the ocean and pressed together tightly against the cold, Ace finally speaks. 

“Look,” he says, a little awkwardly, “I just thought it was kind of pretty, right?”

Sabo glances across and yeah, it really is. The moonlight catches on the reflective surfaces of the boats, outlining their gently swaying silhouettes, and there’s a lighthouse across the quay lighting up the ocean far below. The moon is silver and full and almost impossibly bright, and Sabo rests his head on Ace’s shoulder and says, “Pretty romantic, huh?”

It takes Ace a while to reply, and Sabo thinks he’s done something wrong because sure, the two of them are something, but whether the something they are is  _ that  _ is a topic neither of them has ever really breached before. They could just be friends - best friends, who hold hands in crowds so they aren’t separated and sleep in the same bed even when they don’t need to, and Ace sometimes kisses the top of his head or his cheek but even that doesn’t really mean anything because they’ve never been the most conventional but- 

Ace cuts off his worrying as he leans in and kisses him, and all Sabo knows how to do is kiss back. 

The world has always been cruel. Sabo knows this, perhaps better than anybody else. But here? This is something solid, something warm and loving and real, and Sabo just wants to stay in this moment - kissing Ace, pressed to him as they overlook the black ocean, the moon glowing down at them - forever. Because he’s known since he was seventeen years old that being with Ace is the only thing he’s really meant to do. Because he loves him, perhaps more than he’ll ever love anybody. Because he thinks if Ace let go he might just fall, down through the black ocean and into whatever hell the world could think up that keeps him away from the boy he loves, and their kid, and their life here.

Things, for the first time in years, feel right. 

Sabo wants to stay in Maine. 


	2. fatigue

******fatigue;** **  
** **_/fəˈtiːɡ/ -_ ** **noun**

**meaning:** **extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness; weakness in mental or physical terms caused by repeated variations of stress; the feeling when you ask him** **_can we stop here?_ ** **and he just tightens his grip on the wheel and keeps going;**

**example:** _ Ace is here, and Sabo tries to convince himself that that makes everything alright. Sometimes, it works.  _

**.**

**.**

**.**

**2016.**

They haven’t even been in Maine for a year when Sabo wakes up in the middle of the night to Ace sitting on the floor in a pile of their belongings, packing everything into bags. It’s dark outside with no sign of the moon, and Luffy is still asleep. Everything feels cold - and Sabo’s chest feels more hollow than he thinks it ever has - and there’s a look in Ace’s eyes that he recognises and hates. 

“Ace-”

“Sabo-” Ace’s voice breaks on both syllables, like it physically hurts to get the words out. “Sabo, listen, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Sabo slips down off the bed and onto the floor, takes Ace’s hand in his and pulls it away from where it is frantically trying to shove a balled-up shirt into one of their duffel bags. “Ace. Stop. Stop. Just talk to me about this.”

“I-” Ace seems to deflate. “Sabo, I can’t do this. I can’t do this, I’m sorry, I just  _ can’t.” _

That’s when Sabo gets an inkling that maybe they need to talk about this - about Ace’s constant fear of staying in any given place, about his need to keep moving and to never look back. It’s unhealthy, obviously so, and while there are more unhealthy things (god knows, with poverty and crime and Sabo and Ace’s painfully obvious codependency), it doesn’t spell good things for their future. Not if Ace is never going to stop moving, and Sabo would follow him to heaven or hell, and Luffy doesn’t have anywhere else to be but with them. 

And god, Sabo really doesn’t want to leave. Maine, as grey and clouded and choked with mist-rain as it is, feels like home. It’s a sanctuary, almost, hidden from the real world. Sabo hasn’t had a nightmare in four days and it feels like a record, like something meaningful, but it doesn’t mean anything if Ace is just going to leave. Because if Ace leaves, Sabo will never entertain the idea of not. 

But can you blame him? Maybe recently the greyness of this place, the way the sky feels like a low, warm ceiling - maybe it’s started to feel welcoming, in a way no other place ever has. Maybe Sabo has been working towards a promotion in his job. Maybe he’s been eyeing up some of the little places on the seafront, all whitewashed walls and a rusty, salty smell, that could be home someday. Maybe there’s a half-decent highschool just over the hill. Maybe this place could have been the future - maybe it could have been  _ home. _ Nothing is ever going to be home in the way Ace is, but  _ fuck,  _ sometimes the running and the hiding and the never stopping gets hard. And tiring.

(In this moment, Sabo wants anything and everything that isn’t leaving this place.)

But instead of talking about any of that, Sabo just nods, and presses a kiss to the side of Ace’s lips and says, “Okay. Okay, Ace, we can work this out, somehow.”

.

Three days later, they leave Maine.

.

And maybe all three of them would be lying if they said it doesn’t hurt to leave. Luffy loved it - the ocean is his favourite thing, he used to tell Sabo, because it feels like freedom. Ace’s hands are tighter around the wheel than they were before, like he isn’t as comfortable sitting behind it, and Sabo holds his hand less. Outside, the moon never seems to show at night, and the days are too hot because the air con is broken. 

It’s not all bad. Life could be worse - Sabo is constantly reminding himself these days of how bad things could be, hyperaware of how he wouldn’t be alive (not in the way that counts) without Ace and Luffy. Maybe it’s a fucked up coping mechanism, to imagine how miserable life would be if he wasn’t here in America, but it’s one on a long list of other, even more fucked up coping mechanisms, so Sabo tries not to focus on it too much. Ace is here, and Sabo tries to convince himself that that makes everything alright. Sometimes, it works. 

There are good days, of course. Like when they’re passing through Dover and it’s the fourth of July and none of them have ever celebrated it (because Sabo is British and Luffy is Brazillian and Ace is perhaps the most unpatriotic person Sabo has ever met), but the fireworks are pretty anyway. They pull over and blast REM (and  _ no, shut up, Ace, their music is great, you asshole) _ and dance in the glare of the headlights, and the world doesn’t feel so scary. 

Moments like that make it all feel less like this is going to end in disaster. Sabo never believed in the future before he met Ace, and some days, he can convince himself that one still exists. But the world has never stopped being a harsh place, and it still feels harsh even despite all the good bits when Ace stops reaching for his hand when they get into the car, and Luffy gets bruises from times he gets caught trying to steal food. There is a constant feeling like… things are getting worse. Like something bad is coming for them, to consume and destroy their little family. 

(Sabo tries and fails to ignore it.)

So life goes on like that for a while. The world isn’t as happy or bright as before, when they laughed in the streets and held hands to keep from getting lost in crowds and Ace promised a future in which they weren’t running, but it’s bearable. Bearable is enough, for now. They travel south and west, mostly along the coast just so Luffy can stay near the ocean he loves so much. Nobody talks much in the car anymore - Luffy fidgets and bounces his knees like jackhammers, filled with pent-up energy, and Sabo stares out at the ocean on the horizon, and Ace just presses on the gas and carries on going, and that’s how life stays for a longer time than Sabo likes. 

One night, when Luffy is asleep and Ace pulls over into a layby overlooking the ocean, he and Sabo climb out and wander over to the railing. It feels like flying up here, on the top of the high, wide ridge, with only a fence keeping Sabo from the wide, deep ocean far below. Ace grabs his hand when they reach the edge. Sabo thinks some of his thought process might have shown on his face, because the way Ace grabs his hand makes Sabo feel like he’s the string of a balloon, or a dog’s leash - being held back from flying up and over the railing and far away. 

And some little part of him is scared that he actually wants to.

Most nights are fine. Of course they are - most nights end with Ace and Sabo falling asleep in their car seats, reclined just enough that Luffy has space in the back, holding hands and warm and almost content. But maybe the fact that Sabo always thinks a little to hard when he’s standing on the edges of cliffs and ridges is just another fucked up, unhealthy thing to add to their list of fucked up, unhealthy things, and Ace obviously knows this by how hard he holds Sabo’s hand, and the way his voice sounds when he says, “You alright, Bo?”

“Yeah.” Sabo coughs, maybe to hide the lie. “Yeah, Ace, I’m fine.”

Of course, nothing is really fine. Not Sabo, not Ace, not Luffy. But that doesn’t need saying. 

.

Then, there’s suddenly a night when everything gives way and snaps. 

The sky is light with air pollution but it’s quiet in Richmond, more than most cities, for some reason. Sabo thinks it might be his imagination. It always feels quiet when the engine cuts out for the first time in hours, and the night feels like it’s stretching around them as Sabo clambers out of the front seat and leans against the door, arms folded over his chests, wearing one of Ace’s jackets and a pair of flip-flops and pants with rolled-up legs. Ace gets out of the other door and wanders down the road - they’re pulled over in the middle of nowhere, a few miles out of the city - with his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t tell Sabo where he’s going, and Sabo doesn’t ask because he wants to be able to believe that Ace is coming back. 

Luffy climbs out of the backseat gingerly and just sticks to Sabo’s side for a while, hands in the other’s pockets, trying to stay warm. There’s a bar a few hundred feet down the road, with dim lights illuminating the sign above the door swarming with moths. It’s past 2AM. There are no cars on the road, and Sabo knows that none of them are going to be sleeping much tonight, no matter what time Ace wanders back and declares that they should carry on driving. 

Eventually, Luffy (being the restless, energetic thing he is) extracts himself from Sabo and wanders off in the other direction, towards the seedy-looking bar. Sabo tells him to take care of himself, and Luffy nods absently, probably distracted by the prospect of a vending machine. Sabo is left there, tucked in on himself, and his jacket smells a lot like Ace so he takes it off and risks the cold (mostly because between the cold and the painful nostalgia, one option is a lot more painful than the other). 

The minutes pass slowly. There’s overgrown grass folding over sadly onto the concrete at the side of the road and Sabo toes it with his boot, brushing the strands off the ground until they’re all standing straight again. Then they fold all over again as a gust of wind brushes past, and Sabo tries again, pushes them back past the guardrail meticulously and gently so they all stay upright, pointing upwards towards the dark sky. Something about that makes Sabo happy, for some dumb, stupid reason. 

Then, Luffy screams. 

It’s a mad rush, a panic Sabo doesn’t really remember later on, but let it be known that he doesn’t fucking hesitate. The ground is hard beneath his feet and he’s running, arms cold as the air hits them, a moth fluttering into his face in the dark that he doesn’t even pay attention to, and the doorknob of the bar is stiff but Sabo nearly snaps it off with the force he uses to twist it. Inside, it’s dark and dingy. Luffy is on the ground, near the door, blood on his face. Somebody standing at the bar is laughing. 

Sabo sees red. One minute he’s standing there, silence falling in the room as eyes turn to him, and the next, he and Luffy are scrambling out of there and Sabo’s knuckles are screaming with pain and he can feel his right eye swelling up. The fight was a blur but now it’s in the past, and the only thing Sabo cares about is getting back to the car. Luffy leans on him and he’s shaking like a leaf, small even with how tall he’s been getting recently, face curled into the crook of Sabo’s neck. 

When they reach the car, Ace is all too suddenly there, face too pale in the dim light as he helps Luffy into the back seat and doesn’t comment when Sabo gets in the back with him. Instead, he just gets into the driver’s seat and pushes on the gas, driving and driving. Silence swells in the car and Luffy is still crying, pressing against Sabo, and neither of them are wearing sweatbelts. Sabo hurts, everywhere. 

Some weird thought enters Sabo’s head and he twists in his seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the place they were parked before. Just as it fades out of sight, he sees them - the grass stalks, all of them folded back over again - and it makes this horrible, hollow pain erupt in Sabo’s chest that he suspects might not be all to do with the stupid dumb grass. 

They drive for hours like that, in silence even after Luffy falls asleep curled up against Sabo’s side, tears sticky on his face. Ace doesn’t speak, not even to ask what happened or if they’re alright, but he meets Sabo’s eye in the rear-view mirror and that’s when Sabo says it. 

“We can’t keep fucking doing this, Ace. We  _ can’t.” _

Ace stays silent, in that way he does when he knows Sabo is right about something. This time, though? Sabo doesn’t really feel like shutting up about it.

“Pull over, Ace.”

“Sabo-”

_ “Pull the fuck over.” _

And maybe Ace still has a little shred of self-preservation in him, because he jerks his head in something like a nod and swerves over into a layby, putting their shitty little car into park and opening his door and swinging his legs out of the driver’s seat at lightning speed. Sabo extracts himself from Luffy and staggers out onto the concrete, lightheaded and dizzy with the adrenaline and possibly blunt-force trauma. 

Ace puts a hand on Sabo’s shoulder, maybe to steady him or to hug him or even to kiss him, and Sabo snaps. 

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Sabo rounds on Ace, and turning so rapidly hurts very, very badly but he doesn’t even care anymore. “Keep your fucking hands off me, Ace, we can’t do this now.”

“Okay!” Ace steps back. “Sabo, it’s okay. Sabo. It’s okay. I won’t come any closer.”

He’s using his  _ Sabo is having an anxiety attack  _ voice, all low and soothing, and it makes the anger in Sabo’s gut boil more fiercely. 

“No, Ace, stop. This isn’t about me being fucking upset - this isn’t about me, this is about the fact that we haven’t slept in a bed in a  _ month! _ It’s about the fact that every time I tell you that we need a break, and every time Luffy asks to stop for food, you just drive faster! This is about the fact that we’re dragging a fucking kid around the country with us who has never gone to school - this is about the fact that he’s got more scars than any teenage kid should, Ace, almost as many as you do - and we can’t keep doing this! We can’t!”

“Who says we can’t?!” Ace yells back, and his voice is loud enough to echo, and Sabo tries not to flinch - at the words or the volume, he doesn’t know. “You’re a fucking runaway, he’s illegal - we’re criminals, Sabo, Jesus Christ, it’s not like Luffy’s ever going to get an education from people who think he doesn’t even deserve to live in this country-”

“We can’t just keep putting him in danger - Ace, no matter how much you want to, running isn’t going to keep us safe from whatever you think is going to get to us-” 

And Ace just seems to deflate a little at that. Whatever tension had been in the air that had been forcing them into fighting fades and dies down, and Sabo suddenly feels unreasonably guilty. They meet in the middle, maybe - Sabo isn’t sure which of them falls into the other’s arms, which of them wraps themselves around the other first, but they collide and stay that way, spinning off gently at a tangent with the impact, and Ace is here and cold and shaking, but he’s real, face wet against Sabo’s shoulder. 

“I’m- fuck, I’m sorry, Sabo,” Ace whispers. “I’m sorry I’m this fucked up. Sorry I can’t ever fucking make anything last.”

Sabo pulls away, wipes Ace’s face clumsily with the sleeve of his jacket pulled up over his thumb. “We’ll last.”

“Will we?”

Sabo considers that for a moment, considers that maybe someday this codependent, everchanging whirlwind of a journey they’ve been taking since they were sixteen will end - but there would be nobody there to hold Ace’s hand if that happened, nobody to follow him when he runs from demons only he can see, and there would be nobody there to stop Sabo from jumping from high places, so-

“Yes. There’s no way we can’t.”

It’s not enough - not with Luffy young and vulnerable, and the world constantly out to get them, and Ace so tired all the time, so scared. But maybe they can make it work. 

.

The next place they stop, they stay.

.

.

.

**2017.**

Chester isn’t the largest town, but it’s spread out and not too dense, with the outer suburbs quiet and hazy with summer. They’re not really that far away from Richmond - not far away enough - but it’s a good place to stop and take a breather, and to recuperate. Ace rents a place on the far side of town, with only three rooms, but it’s ten times bigger than anything they’ve stayed in for weeks and all three of them are honestly just glad for the chance to stop and breathe, and to rest, and to sleep properly without back pains and stiff muscles and crackly necks. 

There’s a little field just down the hill from the apartment building, too, where Luffy runs laps to get out the excess energy in his system and Ace and Sabo walk down to sometimes to just wander around. Chester doesn’t feel like Maine did, not even close, but something about it is almost… healing. Like the golden, summer-tinged days are a respite from months of driving and fatigue and loneliness despite being in the same enclosed space with two people for days on end. 

Chester is welcoming, too, in a way a lot of other places just aren’t. None of them have ever been to Virginia before now, but the people are friendly, and jobs come easily, and as long as Ace and Sabo don’t hold hands as they walk down the street, they don’t get any trouble from anybody. Ace and Sabo sleep curled up together again, and Ace kisses Sabo every night and every morning, and Luffy smiles so much more and laughs so much more and this place, Sabo hopes, might be permanent. 

Their days are mostly spent working - Sabo does shifts at a bar nearby, Ace works at a mechanic’s, and Luffy does odd jobs for a bit of cash here and there, constantly exploring and making this sleepy little town his own, one day at a time. At night, the apartment stays warm with summer heat from the daytime, and there’s always enough money to keep them all fed, to keep a little food on the shelves, and just a little extra to buy Luffy little fun things from the charity store down the road.

(And for Ace to jokingly buy Sabo a plastic ring, saying it’s just for a laugh but with a question in his eyes, and for Sabo to kiss a  _ yes  _ against his mouth.)

Life isn’t perfect, but it feels like all any of them know at this point is that it never is, and never can be, so this is as good as things are ever going to get. Nightmares still come, and bad days when Ace has a faraway look in his face and Sabo can’t get out of bed for fear of falling from a high place. But this place feels healing, and warm, and new. Like maybe they can start fresh here. Like maybe the can all just stop and  _ heal _ here. 

It takes six months for Sabo to wake up to Ace on the floor, packing their stuff into duffels. 

This time, Sabo doesn’t even try to argue - just rolls over and shoves his face into a pillow, curls in on himself and tugs the blanket up over his head, and tries very, very hard not to cry. 

(It doesn’t work.)

.

The days feel like they begin to blur and darken at some point, like a watercolour painting that used to be perfect before somebody spilled black coffee on it. Summer is long gone, and the winter is closing in like some long-avoided foe, the days getting shorter, dusk drawing in quicker and quicker. They head west again, inland, and then north, and then east again. Sabo doesn’t miss England, nor does he miss his family, or being alone, or being afraid. But yes, okay, he misses Ace - misses how he used to smile and laugh and make jokes and sing along to songs on the radio. Everything feels too silent these days. 

The months slip by one by one, none of them really bothering to check the date anymore because there isn’t much point. Sabo finds himself thinking a lot of Denver - of sleeping rough, and coppers wrapped in tissues in the bottom of his bag, and how Ace would blow on his fingers to keep them warm at nighttime. He thinks of Maine, too, and how the warm grey sky always felt like a protection, a comfort none of them had ever known, and how seagulls littered the flagstone and the rooftops in the early morning, and Ace kissing him over the ocean. He even thinks of Chester, and how every day was golden, and how Luffy made friends with everybody he met and how he and Ace would sneak to hide behind buildings and steal kisses and giggle against each other in the sun-drenched afternoons. 

Any sense of direction they might have once had, any sense of destination or purpose? It’s gone. Unquestionably, undeniably, gone, without a trace. Travelling for so long and hurting for so long has obliterated it. 

Nobody ever talks anymore. Luffy looks sad all the time now, like the happy part of him is still back in Chester. Ace is more frantic than he’s ever been, more paranoid, scared to even get out of the car some days. Sabo wants to ask him,  _ what are you afraid of? _ but he knows he wouldn’t get an answer. So they all just coexist like that for a while, the three of them not really saying or feeling much, just existing in this dull, hollow state where life doesn’t really have much meaning. Luffy still calls for Sabo some nights, to hold him and reassure him he’s not back in that fucking bar with a stranger carving a knife into his face, but aside from that, it’s like he closes himself off. Sabo hates it. 

There’s an unspoken question there, too, an unasked  _ how does this end? _ Because Sabo knows, deep down, that none of them can really survive living like this for the rest of their lives. Not in the ways that count. And as far as Ace feels like he needs to drive, and as fast as he feels like he needs to run, and as much as Sabo would follow him anywhere (and he would, even to hell if he had to, because he still loves Ace more than he will ever love a person in his life), this can’t go on. Not forever. It  _ can’t. _

.

.

.

**2018 - now.**

And maybe, something makes Ace realise this, too. 

Maybe it’s Luffy, curled up on the back seat and constantly shifting around to get comfortable, restless and trapped. Maybe it’s how the smell of this godforsaken car makes Sabo tense and upset for days on end now, far from how it used to feel like home. Maybe it’s how he and Sabo don’t ever hold hands anymore, not even to fall asleep, or how they haven’t kissed since Chester, or maybe it’s even just how tired the three of them are, how Ace will sometimes catch his own eye in the rear-view mirror and look startled by the darkness under his eyes. 

Something, no matter how small it may be, makes Ace make a decision.

Sabo doesn’t realise where they’re going until the sign appears on the horizon, cheerily proclaiming _WELCOME TO MAINE -_ _The Way Life Should Be._ He looks over at Ace, who has a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

“Ace, are we- are we seriously-”

Ace nods, still with that tiny smile, catching Sabo’s gaze out of the corner of his eye and grinning. “Yep. We are.”

In the backseat, Luffy says, “What? What are we doing?” and then catches sight of the sign and yells, throwing his arms up in victory and whooping. 

“Ace, are we-” And Sabo finds that it’s so fucking hard to get words out suddenly, “Are we really going back?!”

And Ace just grins and presses on the gas, and for once, it means something good. 

.

Their sleepy little town still feels frozen in time, like nothing has changed since the day they left, but it feels a little sunnier and a little brighter now, shadows more clearly outlined by sunlight on the ground, as though the world has made itself new again just for them to reach this place. Driving into the little seaside down and seeing the seagulls, and Luffy opening his window just so he can smell the salt on the air and hear the ocean - all of it feels surreal, and magical, and everything Sabo has ever wanted is right here. 

Ace pours all of their savings and a little extra into getting a deposit on a tiny little place on the seafront, all whitewashed walls and a cozy little interior. Their car barely fits into the little car-parking space squeezed in beside the house, and it’ll be a little cramped for three people, but Luffy has his own room and Ace and Sabo have a bed together and there’s a kitchen with enough shelves to house more food than any of them have seen in months. 

Everything feels perfect. 

The second they have the keys and the landlord - a young lady with bright, auburn hair and warm brown eyes and a tattoo on her shoulder - is gone, Ace unlocks the door and Luffy runs inside, cheering as he tracks a little dirt down the hallway, but it’s alright because the house is home now, and it wouldn’t be home if Luffy wasn’t making a huge goddamn mess everywhere.

Sabo moves to go inside, too, but Ace catches his arm. “Wait a sec, Sab.”

“What is it?” Sabo turns to look at Ace, raising an eyebrow. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Ace takes a deep breath. “This is it, Sabo.”

“This is what?”

“This is where we’re going to stay, if you want that. No matter what I say. No matter how much I want to move on. This is where we’re going to settle, and stay, and maybe you and I can grow up to be some fuckin’ old married couple, and Luffy can go off and travel the world with people he loves, and-” Ace chokes a little on his words- “and I want to spend my life with you here, Sabo. No matter what my stupid fucking brain says. I want to be with you, here, forever, and that’s how it’s going to be, if you want it to.”

Sabo kisses the words out of his mouth, holds Ace’s cold hands in his own, and feels the stupid plastic ring press against their palms. Then, both of them are laughing, sort of giddily, hugging tightly and neither wanting to let go, just content to press together here in the alcove of the doorway of their new home. Their new  _ life. _

And this time, Sabo knows - they’re going to stay in Maine. 

.

The first night is perhaps the best Sabo has had in years. Luffy runs down to the corner shop with a pocketful of change and comes back with arms filled with snacks, dumping them all on their shitty little couch with a grin. There are only three disks on the draw beneath the television, and all three are shitty 90s movies none of them have ever heard of, but they put the one that looks the least awful on (and pointedly ignore the roadtrip-themed movie, because fuck that), and then just settle down, Luffy sitting on the floor between Ace’s legs, Sabo curled up into his fiance’s side. 

Things are going to stay like this, Sabo realises with a kind of solid finality he hasn’t had in years. They’re going to live in this little house for as long as they can, because they’ve all run enough to last a lifetime, and if Ace ever gets that faraway look on his face, Sabo will kiss it off, and if he ever goes to close to the edges of high places, Sabo knows Ace will pull him back. It still feels cathartic, almost - to talk about Denver, and how young and dumb they all were, how Ace and Sabo could just run and run and never stop. 

But those days are gone. Now - here, with Luffy snoring pressed against Ace, and Ace smiling into the darkness because he thinks Sabo isn’t watching, and the TV buzzing quietly in the background, and the tide moving sleepily outside - this is perfect. Not even just close to it anymore, not hovering on the edge of something good. Perfect. Nothing’s ever going to top this, this being here with Ace and Luffy and the peace and quiet and the not needing to run. 

He falls asleep smiling, and knows Ace does, too. 

.

The next morning, the glow still has yet to fade properly. Ace wakes Sabo up by pressing a little kiss to his shoulder, murmuring quietly that he needs to get up, to go find a job somewhere today, that Sabo needs to move off his shoulder. Sabo whines and presses closer, and Ace laughs in a way that makes it sound like Sabo has just stolen all of his breath.

“C’mon, Bo, I gotta go.”

Sabo blows a raspberry against Ace’s neck. “Really?”

A little, fond laugh. “Yes, really. Come on, you can cuddle Luffy - I gotta drive down to the school, too, to see if I can get a place for Luffy, too.”

“Ugh,  _ fine.” _ Sabo sits back, rubbing his eyes and pretending to be angry when all he feels is warm. “Leave me here then, asshole, I’ll just find somebody else to marry.” 

“We both know you wouldn’t,” Ace says against his lips. “You love me. You want to kiss me.”

“I do,” Sabo admits, and kisses him. 

The sky outside is just as bright as yesterday and the world feels so new, and Sabo waves a sloppy goodbye to Ace as he leaves the room, before lying back and closing his eyes for a few more moments, hearing Ace moving around through the house to find his jacket and keys. For the first time in months, nothing hurts - Luffy is asleep on the floor, head cushioned by one of the couch pillows, and Ace is going out to explore their new home, and Sabo is able to sleep here, in this warmth and comfort, for as long as he wants to and nobody can tell him to get up, or that they need to carry on moving. 

Eventually, as Sabo hears Ace yell a quiet  _ bye, Sabo, _ he gets up and stumbles through into the kitchen to get a glass of water, throat parched. The floor is cold beneath his bare feet, the kitchen lit up with cool, calm light. Even just this - clean, fresh water, not just shitty stuff from gas stations that tastes like rust - is perfect. Sabo has never felt so optimistic. So content, with everything and anything (the last time he remembers feeling this way was back in Denver, at the airport with Ace jumping into his arms and never letting go, and that was a long, long time ago). 

Sabo walks back into the main room, hearing Ace pull out of their tiny driveway, and twists the ring on his fourth finger absently as he sits back on the couch and just closes his eyes, wanting to stay in this moment for as long as the universe will allow. Because this is good. And it’s going to stay good. And Sabo couldn’t ever want things any other way. 

And then, just in that moment, it happens. 

There’s a sound like a dozen guns going off from outside, or like a bomb going off, or a building collapsing - a colossal noise that feels too loud for this little town, so loud that Sabo things he’s imagined it for a second. Then, the screams - yells of alarm, muffled through the walls, and people all talking all at once. 

Sabo gets up slowly, padding towards the window with a slowly building sense of dread in his stomach. And then, as he pushes aside the curtains, he sees it. 

There are people rushing from all directions up to the end of the street, yelling, some reaching for their phones and others with hands over their mouths, horror in their faces. There are skid marks tracking up the concrete, like those that would come from a car that tried to stop too quickly, or to turn away from a collision. 

And the front of their car is buried in the side of a truck at the end of the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry


	3. absence

**absence;** **  
** **_/abs(ə)ns/ -_ ** **noun**

**meaning:** **the state of being away from a place or person** **;** **the non-existence or lack of** **; realising that now the only thing in the world you have is this kid you barely know how to take care of and an ache in your chest and the sudden cold that lingers everywhere;**

**example:** _ Ace is right there, ten or twenty feet away, and Sabo wants desperately - more than anybody has ever wanted anything - for him to get up and brush himself off, and tell the paramedics that he’s fine, and to come over and hold Sabo until he can stop trembling. But he can’t. And he won’t. And the world comes crashing and burning at that.  _

**.**

**.**

**now.**

Later, curled up against the door and feeling so numb it’s almost as though he’s died, Sabo won’t remember it very well. Theoretical psychology often cites the fact that your brain behaves differently when under stress or deep trauma - that it tries to protect you. Maybe, in the future, when Sabo won’t be able to remember what Ace’s body looked like no matter how hard he tries, it’ll feel like protection. Like his memories are being toyed with and rewired by a brain that doesn’t want to face them. 

For now? Everything feels real and raw and in perfect clarity. And that’s the hard part. 

Because Sabo can feel, perfectly - as though his every sense is centred in on each tiny sensation in his tingling body - the tightness of his chest, as though the air in his throat has frozen solid, scratching his vocal chords. He can feel the sharp, freezing cold of the doorknob against his hand as he twists it, fumbling with the set of keys Ace left on the hook by the door. He can feel how hard the ground is beneath his bare feet as he runs, and how chilling the air is, seeping through his thin sweatpants and t-shirt. He can see how a cloud has suddenly slipped over the sun, and the sky is still bright but it’s a cold, colourless grey, and there’s a thin mist settling everywhere - or maybe that’s just the fog filling Sabo’s mind like a panicked blur. He can’t really tell. 

He can see them - people, gathered around the wreck, whispering among each other and calling out for help but nobody trying to approach the smashed car, nobody trying to help. Heads turn towards Sabo and he stumbles on something in the road and falls, catching himself on his hands and skidding, and the pain there is sudden and throbbing through the balls of his palms and his knees and his side from the impact. Somebody runs over and puts a hand on Sabo’s arm, maybe to try to help him stand, and he shakes them of with a startled little yell and forces himself up on his own, head spinning. This pain is nothing, because Ace is in the car and the car is-

Twisted impossibly, bent up into itself with the impact. The hood crushed up like an accordion, folds upon folds of crunched metal. The front window is smashed into a million pieces, glass shards everywhere, and the driver’s seat isn’t completely crushed but one of the metal beams that was once running along the side of the truck has bent off and impaled the windscreen and gone right through it and-

Sabo’s knees are all too suddenly hitting the floor again. Somebody’s hands are on his shoulders, people asking if he’s alright, and all he can do is shake his head and try to somehow communicate to them that  _ no, he isn’t alright, he doubts he ever will be, because there’s a support beam going right through Ace’s seat and the gear stick is probably snapped under the pressure of the car collapsing in on itself, and even if they managed to fix the car there would be nowhere to hold Ace’s hand but that doesn’t even matter because there’s a support beam going right through Ace’s seat and- _

There’s an ambulance - the sirens are too loud, too close, but somehow simultaneously drowned out by the pitchy ringing in Sabo’s ears. People in uniforms are swarming around Ace’s side of the car with scary looking equipment in their hands and a stretcher, all faceless and identical in the flashing lights of the ambulance, and Sabo tries to stand up and tell them not to hurt Ace, to be careful, because they might have needles and Ace hates needles and that would scare him, and they might be too rough with him and he doesn’t need any bruises now that they’ve finally found a place where he won’t have to get any. 

And it just keeps on hitting, over and over, like a clip replayed in Sabo’s head that he can’t process. How Ace would hate it if he saw how scratched up the side of the car is now because he always used to say it was their second kid, after Luffy. How Ace is going to be upset that Sabo scraped up his hands and hurt his side. How Ace is right there, ten or twenty feet away, and Sabo wants desperately - more than anybody has ever wanted anything - for him to get up and brush himself off, and tell the paramedics that he’s fine, and to come over and hold Sabo until he can stop trembling. 

But he can’t. And he won’t. And  _ god, _ the whole world comes fucking crashing and burning at that. 

The anger is cold and doesn’t feel anything like anger, and Sabo knows deep down that that’s because it isn’t. But he doesn’t have time to examine it - the world has sped up and his senses are all fucked up again, and Sabo doesn’t process much but one second he’s kneeling on the ground like somebody has torn out his insides, and the next he is up on his feet and screaming in the face of a paramedic, begging them to get Ace out of the car, pleading with them to help him because Ace has never done anything to warrant death in his life, because Sabo loves him, because they only just found a home. 

The paramedic puts a clinically pristine hand up. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down. Are you family?”

“Yes-” And Sabo wants to yell because yes, of course he’s fucking family- “I’m his fiance-”

The last word comes out as a harsh sob, and Sabo doesn’t think he would be able to curl in on himself further than he already was but then the paramedic is talking, still clinical and calm, telling Sabo that she’s sorry but Ace was dead before they even got here-

That’s when everything stops making sense. When the protection kicks in, Sabo thinks, or maybe it’s just the fact that Ace has been the only thing keeping him alive for years now and a part of him - the part that matters - just died, and the rest of his body can’t survive without it. He’s yelling, he realises - or maybe he isn’t. It’s hard to tell what is and isn’t real when the world barely feels corporal. The paramedic takes a step back, shaking her head, and they’re wheeling the stretcher - and  _ Ace, god, oh my god, that’s Ace, that bloody, torn-up thing is Ace  _ \- onto the ambulance and closing the doors. 

Sabo grabs the paramedic’s shirt desperately, not even knowing what he’s asking for anymore. “Please- god, please, fuck-” 

“I’m sorry, sir-” the paramedic has gone stiff, pulling away sharply. “There’s nothing we can do.”

There’s warmth against his back, Sabo realises, as the blank-faced paramedic gets into the ambulance. Arms around his stomach, wetness on his shoulder. Luffy seems to fade into reality through the fog and he’s talking, quick and panicked, pleading with Sabo to just stop. 

“Sabo- please, Sabo, come inside, come on Sabo, come inside-”

And he’s crying, sucking in little shaky breaths that Sabo knows will soon dissolve into wailing and heaving and snot. Sabo can’t work up enough feeling in his heavy, dead arms to hug back, or to even turn, and Luffy just tugs on him in a futile attempt to pull him towards him, arms tight around his chest, jerking with wrecking, aching sobs that make it seem like his skinny frame is just going to snap under the pressure and break into a million little pieces. 

People are staring, and the car is still torn apart in the road, mutilated beyond repair, three of the tires popped under the pressure and Sabo’s seat broken in half and Luffy’s backseat spaces, with little gadgets and nicknacks and mementoes shoved down into the seat cushions and the side compartments, ripped open and crushed. It’s like this little car - which Sabo has loathed for months now, but has been their home for half a decade now, really - has been crunched up and destroyed and everything that it meant, the home it was to him and Luffy and Ace, is just gone. 

And Ace. Ace is gone, too. 

.

Luffy cries, and cries, and cries. It feels like it never stops, or slows. Sabo can hear him, curled up into a tiny ball on the couch in the living room where Ace sat hours ago, face pressed against the pillows, wailing and heaving, struggling to draw in breaths between his sobs.

Sabo has only ever seen Luffy cry twice, aside from Richmond (which is an incident that never really gets counted into lists, because Sabo doesn’t like to think about it) and now. The first time was when they first told him that they were going to take him with them, to travel the country together and to be a part of their little family and to find freedom together. Sabo and Ace had been only twenty-one years old, and they had both still believed in foreign concepts like destination and home and rest stops, and there was never really a moment when they weren’t holding hands because Ace craved affection and Sabo just craved Ace. Luffy had looked up at them from his place pressed against the door in the backseat of their beat-up little car and tears had filled his eyes but he’d nodded anyway, young and fumbling with finding the right words in English as he told them he would.

The second time was that one time when Sabo got into a fight that didn’t end to well - when he barely managed to drag himself back to the van and then just collapsed on the ground a foot from it and knocked on the passenger door with bruised knuckles until Ace got out and caught sight of him and all of his breath seemed to leave him at once. They couldn’t ever afford to go to the hospital, not even for this, and Sabo distinctly remembers lying across the back seat with Ace pressing on a stab wound in his gut, saying he was sorry over and over and over, and Luffy holding his hand and crying against Sabo’s cold fingers. 

Neither time - and not even Richmond - compares to this. 

Sabo presses in on himself, tries to compress himself as he curls back against the front door and just hugs his knees to his chest. He barely made it inside and managed to close the door before collapsing, and Luffy just stared at him for a long moment, with this terribly young look in his eyes like he wanted to collapse too, before having to bite his trembling lower lip, face screwing up, and bolting for the other room. With every muffled wail and gasp, Sabo curls up tighter, crunching up on himself like the car did against the side of the truck. It feels like a support beam has run through him, too, smashing his windscreen and impaling the seat and impaling  _ Ace. _

_ God. _

It’s a reality that is so big and wide and hard to process that it still doesn’t feel real, even after the support beam and the stretcher and the paramedic saying there was nothing they could do. Sabo’s thoughts keep coming back to Ace, over and over - how Ace would slap Luffy upside the head for crying for so long, how Ace would hate how much Sabo is hurting right now, how Ace never ended up reaching the school and that means Sabo is going to have to but they don’t have a car to get there and Ace is always the one who talks to people because Sabo has social anxiety and Luffy can barely speak English. 

But Ace is gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. 

That cold thing that didn’t feel like anger is gone. Even the grief is gone - the cold, sharp, agonising pain that came with realising there would be nowhere to hold hands and nobody to hold hands with, and Sabo not even knowing if Ace still has a hand anymore. Everything feels numb, now. Cold and dead and gone. Like Ace left and he took Sabo’s heart, and his stomach, and all of the blood in his veins with him. Like now Sabo is just an incomplete human - a hangman stick-figure drawn all jerky and spiky and out of proportion, and without a heart or a hand to hold, or anything at all. 

Sabo cries, then. That’s what makes the floodgates give - or maybe it’s the broken gearstick, or how much his bleeding hands hurt, or how the car is going to have to be sent to be crushed and compacted in a dumping ground, or maybe it’s just that moment in which it hits Sabo. That Ace is gone and never, ever coming back.

.

The days loose any distinct feeling. It’s like time stops having much meaning - now that they’re not driving, and they’re not running, and Ace isn’t here to tell them to get up and get moving every morning, it’s almost like a rift has torn itself open in the middle of their universe and bent space and time just a little, so both are imperceptible and dull and meaningless. 

Neither Sabo nor Luffy leaves the house for days. Somebody - a neighbour who knows what happened, maybe, or the landlord - leaves a few bags of groceries on the doorstep, and Sabo has to work himself up to open the door and collect them for ten minutes because he’s terrified of seeing the car wreck still in the road. Luffy curls up on the couch with one of Ace’s t-shirts and just cries for days, and it feels so unlike Luffy (who has always been so tough that it’s almost like he isn’t real) but this is real - the grief, and the loss, and the fact that Luffy has lost an older brother and a protector and a parent and a best friend all at once. 

You read books sometimes where they say it comes in phases. That there are stages of grief that everybody goes through, in some shape or form, and only once you’ve worked your way through them can you progress onwards and move on. Sabo thinks that’s bullshit - it doesn’t come in phases because anybody who thought this was predictable, or managable, or even harbouring a slight possibility of resolution someday is a fucking idiot, and has never hurt like this before. 

Some days don’t feel like days - Sabo just drifts around their tiny house in a daze, sits on the couch with Luffy and lets him cry on his shoulder and fall asleep hugging Sabo’s arm to his chest, and makes toast and then leaves it uneaten on the kitchen counter because he’s scared that if he eats, the food will lodge in his throat because his stomach feels like it’s just disappeared and left an empty space in his gut. Other days are harder and all Sabo can do is cry, the grief hitting over and over and over, and he’ll try to find one of Ace’s shirts and cry if it smells like him and cry if he doesn’t, and he can’t figure out which is worse, yet. 

The worst days are the days when Luffy isn’t crying - when he’s up and stumbling around the house and Sabo catches him talking to nothing in the kitchen and the cupboard under the stairs and the living room and the doorway. Most of the time, days like that end in screaming, throwing things, because Sabo just wishes things could be different and Luffy wants to feel something that isn’t the deep, hollow loss that has swelled to fill this whole house. They don’t ever really hug it out, or fall asleep curled up together, when Luffy isn’t crying. Sabo’s afraid that it’s because if Luffy hugs him,  it’ll become clear that it’s just them and nobody else is here to join in, nobody to ruffle Luffy’s hair or kiss Sabo’s cheek. It’s just the two of them now, for as long as the world carries on turning, and the truth of that is unbearable. 

And  _ god. Ace.  _

Maybe it’s the loneliness of it all, or the terrifying inevitability that sometime soon, Sabo is going to have to go the morgue and fill out heaps of paperwork and decide what to do with the rotting husk of a body that they dug out of the wreckage of the car. Maybe it’s even just that some part of Sabo wants to hurt, wants to cry and wail and feel something that isn’t just the dull, cold throb of grief. 

Either way, something draws Sabo to his phone - to log onto the forum where he and Ace met and to scroll through their messages. The last ones they ever sent were in 2011, more than seven years ago now -  _ did he catch u? _ followed closely by  _ no, god no, i just can’t wait to see you, _ and Ace’s reply of  _ we’ll find a place, ye? _ makes Sabo’s chest ache like something has impaled him through the heart and snapped all of his ribs. Hours later, Sabo’s simple  _ i’m here, are you going to be here soon? _ is unanswered, and that shouldn’t make him sad but it does. 

The older messages hurt just as much - like how they used to have a little code where Ace would send a number with no context, between one and ten, to show how good or bad his day was. Sabo would always reply, without fail, a number just above what Ace’s was, just so Ace would feel a bit better, and even though both of them knew it was bullshit, that Sabo’s life was a miserable car crash of unattainable futures and wishes to be somewhere he wasn’t. But the world was hopeful then, and so where they, they Sabo knows that back then, they would have been content to chase each other around the whole world and to have nothing but one another, and it would have been enough. 

(Right now, it scares Sabo how much he would be willing to give for Ace to just be here, and for that to be enough.)

.

Sabo isn’t quite sure how much time passes before the little thing he hasn’t had time to be concerned over - Luffy standing in the empty kitchen and talking to an unoccupied space, or mumbling to no one under his breath, or staring at nothing with the eyes of a person seeing a ghost - gets worse. Sure, Sabo is willing to let the kid have his coping mechanisms (and god knows he needs them). Between Luffy talking to nobody and Sabo not speaking for days and days on end now, both of them are unimaginably fucked up at this point. 

But it gets to a dangerous point when Luffy sits beside Sabo against the front door and says, “Do you ever think Ace is still here?”

Sabo doesn’t answer for a while. Part of the reason is that he’s trying to think through his answer carefully, trying to find the best way to keep from agreeing - because fucking hell, this has gone too far - but not to break Luffy, either. “Do you think he is, Lu?”

Luffy nods a little, rubbing at his tired eyes. “It’s so cold all the time - and sometime I just see him, like in the kitchen or under the stairs or something - and I think he might have stayed, Sabo. Like, he’s still here.”

It’s not quite any particular part of that that makes Sabo cry - he can’t quite pinpoint what it is that starts it, but his eyes are suddenly stinging and Luffy recoils as Sabo feels his shoulders shaking, jerking forwards with sobs. He buries his face in his knees and just cries - for Luffy, who has resorted to such fucked-up coping mechanisms, and for Ace, who is gone and never returning, and for himself, alone and lost and doomed to spend eternity with nobody. 

Luffy hugs Sabo around the chest, trying to unfurl him from the tight ball he has pulled himself up into, saying, “No, Sabo, come on - I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Please don’t cry, Sabo, Please don’t.”

And all Sabo can do is shake his head and cry harder because this is fucked up. So unimaginably, ridiculously fucked up. And nothing is ever going to be the same again, not ever. 

.

Sabo isn’t sure what pulls him out of the door in the middle of the night, wrapped up in Ace’s sweatshirt and wearing flip flops. Luffy is asleep on the couch after a day of staring into space, and Sabo closes the door behind him as quietly as he can and wanders down across the road, through a little gap in the houses. The moon isn’t quite full but it’s getting there, slanted and split along one side, and not very bright as it hangs over the ocean like a dull searchlight. 

Sabo tries to convince himself that that’s the reason he sits up on the railing - to see the moon better. That’s the only thing it can be. There’s no part of him that just wanted to get closer to the drop, he tells himself, no little impulse in him that wants to find out how deep the shining black waters really are. 

But there is. Of course there is. 

And Ace isn’t here this time to grab Sabo’s hand and to haul him back, to keep him tied to the shore like the string of a helium balloon. Sabo shifts down on the railing a little, loosening his hands around the bars, so breathtakingly close to slipping down and down and down, unsure for a moment that if he felt himself begin to fall he would be able to catch himself. And still, Ace isn’t here. He doesn’t miraculously appear, to grab Sabo and pull him backwards hard enough for them both to fall back onto the flagstone. He doesn’t put a hand on Sabo’s shoulder and tell him to stay. 

Because he didn’t stay on. Ace was a human, with a beating heart and blood in his veins, and then a support beam went through his chest and his body was crushed up with the gargantuan impact of a car crash and now he’s gone - dead, his brain no longer sending electrical impulses, the remains of him lying cold on a morgue table. Luffy is delusional and aching with grief, and Sabo is alone. And nothing is okay anymore.

Sabo doesn’t jump, in the end. No part of him fears death, of course - nothing can be worse than the hell the real world has summoned for him, right here in Maine, without Ace. But Luffy would be alone, and he would cry and blame himself and nobody would be around to take care of him; and Sabo, no matter how much this hurts right down to his bones, could never let that happen. 

Pulling himself down from the railing is the hardest thing Sabo has ever had to do, though. 

.

It’s been a week and a half since the car crash when Luffy sits down next to Sabo again, looking small and gaunt and a little scared, and mentions it for the second time. 

“I really do think Ace is still here, Sabo. Like, he found some way to stay. He’s always everywhere - and it’s always so cold where he is, and he wants me to tell you that he’s here.”

This time, Sabo doesn’t cry. “Luffy, listen. I know it’s hard to deal with. I  _ know.  _ But telling yourself that Ace is still here isn’t going to help that.”

“He  _ is,  _ though,” Luffy says, quietly. “Sabo, just listen to me. I can explain it - I can explain it all. I promise. You just have to believe me. He’s here - and he wants to show you, but he says you don’t believe in ghosts and stuff, so you can’t see him, even though you’re the reason he stayed, and he wants so badly to move something or do something to show you but he’s not strong enough- and Sabo, you have to believe me, Sabo-”

And across the room, so suddenly that both of them flinch, Luffy’s and Sabo’s rucksacks (still unpacked, barely even touched) topple off the couch and onto the floor, and roll just a little too far for it to be natural, and the house feels like it gets ten degrees cooler all at once. 

There are maybe thirty seconds of pure silence. Then, Sabo turns back to Luffy, and says, “Okay. I’m listening.”

.

And maybe that’s why Sabo finds himself where he is now - curled up on a chair in the empty library and scanning article after article on the paranormal, like he’s sixteen and trying to find some way to cope in a world he didn’t have any hope for all over again. Because Luffy has apparently seen dead people since he was a kid - because Ace is somehow here, maybe, and the sincerity in Luffy’s face when he told Sabo that Ace is always with him was too real and hopeful to ignore. 

It’s hard. Of course it is - because Sabo doesn’t really believe it yet, at all, and because doing this makes him remember what things were like nine years ago. At one point, he stumbles upon an article on the _ Shunka Warakin _ and nearly cries, right there in the middle of the library. An old lady stacking shelves brings Sabo something hot and sweet in a mug, steam leaking into the air from it, and just waves him off when he tells her that he doesn’t need it. Sabo comprehends at that point that he really must look awful. 

It takes a while, but eventually, Sabo starts getting somewhere. There’s a theoretical study into parapsychology - ghosts and spirits and soulmates - carried out a few years ago that leads him to the biography of a psychologist practitioner, which paves the way for Sabo to stumble onto a scanned pdf of twenty pages of barely readable notes on more of the same: ghosts, and lingering spirits, and even more about soulmates. Soulmates, soulmates, soulmates. 

So Sabo changes his tactics - starts researching soulmates and scrolls past pages upon pages of URLs leading to dating websites and romance novels and all that bullshit. The definition keeps popping up over and over; ‘a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner; somebody you care about more than anything in the world’, and Sabo adds in his head,  _ the boy with the grey eyes I would be willing to die to see again. _ Because he would. And he might, if this doesn’t work. 

Every time Sabo gets his doubts (especially after _ six hours  _ of this bullshit, of searching and searching and finding only dead ends), he just thinks back to Luffy - how hopeful the kid was, how sure he was that Ace was still here, the look on his face when he told Sabo that Ace misses him. The fact that he’s always been able to see dead people, and just assumed that it was something normal, something you don’t talk about. How lost he is - how lost they both are - without Ace. 

That’s what it takes for Sabo to just keep searching, and searching, and searching. 

And eventually, five minutes before the library is meant to close, he finds it. 

.

So that’s what it takes - the build-up to now, standing here outside the morgue at 3AM and waiting for a necromancer called Zoro to turn up, Luffy still back home. It’s so dark that the whole world feels like it has stopped, time frozen. Sabo shivers and buries himself deeper into the jacket that doesn’t smell much of Ace anymore, and waits for the last shred of hope he has to appear. 

After what could have been an hour or ten, a figure comes around the corner at the end of the street, a scarf tucked tightly around his neck and face. Sabo doesn’t really know what he was expecting when he got in contact with a necromancer from Japan on a website he doubts anybody has ever visited for anything other than to try to find hitmen or drugs. Maybe a figure in a dark cloak, looming from the darkness and waving its arms ominously like a ghoul. Or maybe a Japanese samurai, with katanas and a kimono, ready to  _ Jackie Chan  _ Ace back to life. 

In reality, the man looks about twenty, not too many years older than Luffy. He’s wearing a leather jacket with a lot of scuffed-up patches, and a graphic t-shirt, and a scarf and boots that look a good few years old. His green hair is growing out black at the roots, a little in need of a trim, and his face is hard and shadowed in the same way Sabo has seen in his own for the last two weeks.

“Are you my guy?” the necromancer asks, warily. He has a thick Japanese accent. 

“If you’re mine, yeah.” Sabo puts out a hand and they both pretend it isn’t shaking. “Sabo Portgas.”

“Zoro.” The man has a firm handshake.

The morgue is looming over them, tall and domineering, and Zoro looks up at it with narrow eyes. “Your boy’s in there?” 

“Yeah. And I got in earlier and disabled the motion sensors on the alarm system.”

Zoro looks him up and down. “On your own?” 

Sabo nods, gesturing to himself vaguely as if to say  _ hi, yes, I’m a criminal and have been since I was eighteen years old.  _ Sabo doesn’t know what it is - the all-black attire, or the little scars that must stand out in the moonlight dotted everywhere, or his stance, or the eyes that Zoro must see himself in. Either way, something makes the necromancer take his word for it. 

Getting in is relatively easy, really. Sabo has already stashed a crowbar near the back entrance, and he and Zoro pry the door open, Sabo catching the door when it flies open so as to muffle the sound. Earlier, Sabo disabled the alarm just inside the main entrance, where it was still slightly well-lit with the glowing green shine of a fire exit sign. Back here, however, everything is pitch black. Sabo and Zoro stumble through the narrow back corridors, only able to use the little light on Zoro’s phone to guide the way, using the walls and each other to gain their bearings. Corridor after corridor feels the same, and Sabo hugs the left wall as they count door after door, marking off the numbers printed on them - 45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40-

The door marked with 39 looks just like all the others, painted clear white and with a little window in the wall beside it, blinds closed. Sabo jimmies the lock with a hairpin that used to be Ace’s, and it takes a few minutes, but eventually, he and Zoro manage to stumble in, Zoro immediately moving to make sure there are no windows before turning on the light. 

Blue spots fill Sabo’s vision for a second with the sudden brightness of the room, but he blinks them out frantically, half expecting to see the body lying on a table in the middle of the room like something out of a detective movie. He doesn’t - there is a bed in the middle of the room, but it’s empty, and the wall along one side is gridded with metal drawers. 

Zoro crosses the room to Sabo, holding his hand out expectantly, and it takes Sabo a moment to figure out what he wants. When he does, jumping a little, he nods hurriedly and scrambles in his pocket to find the little slip of paper (it’s not the best picture of Ace in the world, taken in the car with the front camera of a mobile phone, Sabo’s head shoved up under his chin, both of them grinning sunny, love-filled smiles at the camera, but it’s the best Sabo could find) and hands it to Zoro. The man raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. 

“Close your eyes if you’re squeamish,” he says instead, and Sabo doesn’t know what would be worse - the body being here, or it not being here.

It’s so fucking cold in this room. It feels cold everywhere now. Sabo crosses the room and sits back against the wall and closes his eyes, pulling Ace’s jacket tighter around himself. While he isn’t squeamish, he thinks perhaps seeing any more bodies now would be the straw to break the camel’s back. He can hear it, though - Zoro opening every drawer, pulling back the sheets and checking faces to find Ace’s among the strangers’. With every draw slid open, and every sheet rustled, Sabo’s heart tightens just a little more. Because now - because of this hope and how he knows just how desperately he’s clinging to it - he knows instinctively that if this doesn’t work tonight, he isn’t going to make it home without stopping off at the railing. Everything else be damned. 

It feels like an eternity crammed into five minutes before Zoro finally finds him, pulling Ace’s sheet back fully and sliding him onto the hospital bed. Sabo takes a deep breath and stands, forces himself to look at Ace and feels the sight of him steal his breath before he has even fully processed it. 

Ace looks so peaceful. It sounds cliche, but he could almost be sleeping - face calm and loose, no furrow between his brow for the first time in months and months. His lips are blue, though, and his face completely colourless. He’s shirtless and presumably naked, the sheet still covering his lower half, and the tear in his chest is stitched up neatly, a dull, meaty purple-red  around the edges. There’s a gash in his forehead, too, going down from Ace’s hairline, through the tip of his eyebrow and over the bridge of his nose, that wound presumably glued. His body is pristine and perfectly clean. Sabo is suddenly bizarrely sure that the clothes he has brought are too dirty. That they’ll infect him.

God. Sabo can barely force himself to do this.  _ God.  _

Zoro shoots him a look. “You good?”

“Yeah.” Sabo swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine - let’s get this over with?”

“Okay.” Zoro coughs to clear his throat and then leans down over Ace and puts his hands over his chest, pressing down on the stitched up wound. Sabo forces down every instinct inside him that wants to push the guy away from Ace, or to plead with him to stop hurting him. 

Instead, Sabo pulls up a chair and grabs Ace’s hand, sitting as close to his head as he can get. The room feels like it gets a little darker and a little colder as Zoro starts chanting, mumbling low, trance-like words under his breath. Sabo rubs the back of Ace’s hand with his thumb, in slow circles in the way he knows calms Ace down, even though he knows Ace can’t feel it. Sabo closes his eyes - maybe to avoid having to see things go wrong, as they always seem to do. 

The room gets colder and colder, and Zoro carries on chanting, words a low, constant hum of sound. Sabo opens his eyes just a little, and sees that his breath is fogging in front of his face, ice beginning to creep along the metal frames of the bed and frosting up Zoro’s furrowed eyebrows, freezing the tips of his hair. Ace still hasn’t moved, and Sabo closes his eyes again.  _ This is hopeless. This is hopeless. This is hopeless.  _

When he opens them again maybe twenty seconds later, however, Sabo loses the ability to really think anything at all. 

Because Ace’s cheeks have a little colour in them, and his lips are a little pale but they’re no longer blue. A little shaving of ice falls from Zoro’s hair and lands on Ace’s arm, and Sabo watches it melt, mouth open and eyes wide. Zoro is still chanting, and Sabo clutches Ace’s hand so tightly that he’s afraid that he’ll break his own fingers, because his own body feels tingly and fragile now. 

And suddenly, Zoro cuts off abruptly, and Ace’s eyes fly open. 

It doesn’t feel real, like this is some shitty scene in a movie that critics would call cheesy and unrealistic. But the way Ace’s grey eyes find Sabo immediately, as they always have, feels real. The way his face twists in recognition, and then realisation, and then understanding - that feels real, too. The way Ace grips Sabo’s hand very, very tight feels real, as well, and Sabo is crying then, tears making his vision blur sideways. 

“Sabo?” Ace tries to say, and his voice is so torn up that the words barely come out, but Sabo understands them anyway, and they sound like home. “Sabo, Sabo, Sabo-”

Vaguely, Sabo realises that Zoro has backed off to give them some space, but he doesn’t even care. Ace’s hand is warm, his cheeks flushed and full of colour, and Sabo throws his arms around him and just cries until he can’t breathe, wails like Luffy’s tearing their way from his throat. Ace’s arms are shaky and far too weak as he hugs back, but he does anyway, face pressed against Sabo’s collarbone, shaking with something between laughter and sobs that Sabo doesn’t care to find out. 

“A-Ace-” And god, it’s so hard to get words out, but Sabo doesn’t even care. “I love you. I love you, and I always loved you - I’ve loved you for nine years and I’m never letting you go again, not ever, and I’m so fucking sorry, Ace-” 

Ace kisses him, and Sabo can taste tears in it. The room is still cold but Ace is impossibly warm, and everything is all too suddenly okay again. Because Ace is alive. And Sabo is alive now, too, and Luffy will be as soon as they get home, and then they can run - find another town where nobody recognises them and settle down, and get married, and live lives they’ve always wanted to. 

Ace pulls back just a little, so he can press his forehead against Sabo’s, and he’s laughing breathlessly through his tears as he says, “Next time, let’s take a train, okay?”

.

Luffy cries even more than Sabo when they finally get home at five am, the sky just starting to lighten, Zoro tagging along awkwardly behind them. Ace is weak and too frail to really look like himself, but he manages to hold himself up as Luffy barrels into him, and that’s a start. Sabo offers Zoro a room for the night - Luffy’s, which has never been used - and the guy looks too drained to say no. Luffy intercepts him on the stairs and hugs him around the middle, blubbering into his shirt how thankful he is for him saving his big brother, and Zoro pats the kid’s head awkwardly with a strange look on his face. Sabo and Ace exchange knowing looks, because yep - that’s how somebody looks when they’ve been brought under Luffy’s charismatic, loveable spell. 

None of them have the energy to say much. There’s so much that needs to be talked about - how they need to skip town again now, because Ace can’t really be seen walking around with his body missing from the morgue, and how none of them are going to be getting in a car anytime soon, and how Ace was fucking dead for two weeks and how much that hurt. There are so many issues hanging between the three of them that need to be discussed and resolved that it’s almost hard to count them all.

Right now, however, none of them can. Ace collapses back onto the couch with a wince, feeling the ridge of stitches beneath his shirt. Sabo pulls his hand away from his chest and kisses each of his fingers, still sniffing, because his head feels full of cotton wool with all the crying he’s done tonight. Both of them melt back into the cushions, Luffy pushing himself between them, and it’s a little too warm but nothing has been even slightly warm in weeks, so none of them really complains. 

Just as he feels like he’s about to fall asleep, Sabo whispers to Ace in the dark, “Do you remember being dead?”

Ace’s breathing hitches. “Just a little. I remember you, mostly. I stayed with you. Didn’t have a choice, but even if I had, I would have stayed with you.”

“You didn’t have a choice?”

Ace nods, presses his face to Sabo’s. “You’re the reason I could stay. I had a choice… I can’t explain it, but if you were still here, a part of me would always be stuck to you, and a part of you would leave with me. Like we’re…”

“I know,” Sabo whispers eventually, because neither of them needs to say the word  _ soulmates  _ to hear it in the air between them. “We are.”

And Sabo has never been more certain of anything in his life. 

.

.

.

**someday.**

It’s a year or two later when Luffy leaves, running off with Zoro and some scrawny little illegal kid called Chopper to travel the world. Sabo and Ace wave them goodbye as Luffy leans the whole top half of his lanky body out of the window and yells his farewell to the street at large, hollering that he’ll come home to visit them someday, and that he’ll text them all the time and remember to brush his teeth and he’ll always remember to stop and breathe like Sabo always reminds him to. Chopper, squashed into Luffy’s lap in the front seat, waves shyly at them. Zoro backs into their mailbox. 

The little town they found is further west than they’ve ever gone, far away from Denver and Chester and Maine, and it’s a place that’s always warm because the cold always makes Sabo think about loss and death. Their house is small, but they don’t have a car so there wasn’t much expense spared on it. Ace works at a mechanics’. Sabo has recently gotten a promotion at his job as a journalist. The world isn’t always bright, because nothing ever is, but it’s bright enough - Ace is here, and they aren’t running anymore, and Ace doesn’t even seem to want to anymore. Like dying recalibrated his settings so he’s able to put in a destination and navigate there and stay there. 

Zoro’s van drives around the corner at the end of the street, catching the sunlight before it’s gone. Ace grabs Sabo’s hand and they walk inside, and Sabo closes the door behind them. Inside, it’s light and airy and everything the car wasn’t, and the walls are painted with colours that don’t always look as vibrant as they should, but nobody ever leaves the curtains closed and there’s sunlight everywhere, and that’s always been enough. 

Ace wanders off to the living room and Sabo makes tea. This is a routine that both of them are used to - because when you live in one set place, everything is just regular enough for you to make those. There’s a little stash of tea an old friend sent Sabo from England, and even Ace admits that it’s good enough to build a collection of in the drawer, and all the mugs in the cupboard are mismatched and chipped, from charity stores and garage sales, but they’re perfect and they’re theirs. 

Sabo carries the tea into the living room and puts it down on the coffee table. He and Ace come together, then, like magnetised things often do - Sabo melts against Ace’s side on the couch, and Ace presses his lips against his hair, and they fight for about thirty seconds over what cheesy film to watch on Netflix before Sabo kisses a snarky retort out of Ace’s mouth and puts on his favourite before Ace can protest. 

This isn’t something cosmic anymore. Sabo and Ace don’t fall asleep clutching each other so hard that it’s difficult to breathe, and they don’t wake up screaming at night at the prospect of losing each other, and Ace isn’t a soul tethered to Sabo with both of them torn apart to the point of agony without one another. There’s no more road - no more late night rest stops and no more wandering down country roads in flip flops, and no more pickpocketing or bruises or strange looks from people they don’t know. Nothing has ever really been like this before. 

But there are still shitty REM songs - Ace still makes bad movie references and sings loud and out-of-key, though now it’s as he cooks, not as he drives. Sabo still worries about his father sometimes, but he also tucks his cold feet beneath Ace at night time, and kisses his nose, and he still loves the sky at sunrise and the smell of tea (this time homemade, rather than bought in a plastic cup at some roadside diner). He can trust himself near high places, and Ace doesn’t ever want to run anymore, and Sabo had thought life couldn’t be good, but it is. 

This is a constant, a lulling push and pull as calm and deep as the tide back in Maine, and this, Sabo hopes, is permanent. 

.

(“This is real, right?” Ace will ask sometimes. And Sabo will tell him yes a thousand times or more - however many he needs to - until Ace believes him.

And eventually, without fail, Ace always does.)

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you very much for reading! please leave a comment if you can! <3  
> also i did an art! (hope it appears gjegojkdslfgsd) let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment if you have time!


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